The “Karate Kid” and other Scenes from Nature

I finally had a day off yesterday! So what else would I do besides grab my camera and go for a nice long canoe paddle. 🙂 The Great Egret in this first image was cracking me up. He was balancing on this branch, swaying in the breeze, and holding the PERFECT Karate Kid pose!

All images photographed with the Nikon D300. (I prefer that camera over my D3 for wildlife because of the extra reach the 1.5x crop factor gives me.) Some of the birds were shot from a tripod with the Nikkor 200-400 f4 VR with Nikon TC14eII attached. The sunset and other birds were shot hand-held using the 70-200 f2.8 VRII with the new TC20eIII attached. This is the first tele-converter with aspheric optics and is pretty amazing combo on the 70-200! The wide-angle work was done with the 14-24 f2.8. Enjoy!
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